Midnight Lullaby
by Nature9000
Summary: For many years when night falls over the town of Los Angeles, the air fills with a mournful lullaby being echoed by a single woman living upon a dreary home. What is the story of this woman and the song that she plays each day? Whose return does she wait for, and for what purpose does she play the lonesome song that attracts so many curious visitors?


Midnight Lullaby

Disclaimer: Don't own victorious

A/N: This oneshot is inspired by a song a friend of mine showed me performed by Sweetbox, the song "Piano in the Dark". But best if you listen to this music while reading: www . youtube watch?v=oh6NKK8M2VQ -what I listened to while writing this piece. Enjoy the oneshot!

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-88 KEYS TO PAIN-

The streets of Los Angeles after midnight were filled with a gloomy silence, with only the sound of a quiet howl in the distance. A lone vehicle zipped down the dusty cracked pavement beneath the dimly lit lamps above it.

Turning onto the desolate Chambers St, one must note the third house on the left. Along the quiet road it was the one house resting with its door ajar and a crack that told a tale of a violent assault against it. Deep in the late hours of night, and early morn, it would be the one home in which there was an amber glow in the window.

Curious passerby's could stop at the curb and trek onto the untrimmed, knee-high grass. To their right was often a busted brick mailbox with several misplaced and shattered bricks. If they walk along the brittle sidewalk they would come to an eerie black gate put up recently, though the ivy on it gave it a much more aged appearance.

The gate would creak as though it lacked the oil needed to refine it, and the porch lights on either side were made of broken, shattered glass. Both held a busted bulb.

Next to the front door was a glossy window with a growth of thick fog and a faded circle that was created over time as people viewed the sinister home. Inside they would see a figure dressed in black. Her brown curls flowed into numerous split ends and her eyes were raw while her once youthful face had created deep scowl lines and creases that made this young woman appear as though she aged two decades ahead of her time.

At precisely two in the morning, this figure would rise up and move to a brown piano that rested at the bottom of her staircase. She would turn out the lights of the living room and turn on the dim amber lamp whose only purpose was to light up a faded piano book. The piano keys were worn and the body slightly torn. Sitting opposite the lamp was a tall, half-drank whiskey bottle.

The figure in the long black dress would lift her pale arms and stretch her thin, bony fingers out onto the keys. Then the bitter cold wind and quiet moonlit skies of Los Angeles would feel with a soft, eerie music that can chill a man to the bone. The icy fingers would play with a skill as if they'd spent no more time doing much else.

The walls of the home were peeling and the floorboards separated at their once thin cracks. Crooked, broken pictures hung in various locations. Pictures that were filled with laughter, shadowed by the shades of night.

Occasionally the curious onlooker would hear a pause in the melody that entranced them and they would feel an ominous presence. When they look back into the window, the woman at the piano would be staring back at them, as though gazing into their very soul and cursing the ground they walked on.

Her deadly eyes would be frozen in theirs, her cracked lips pulled back into her cheeks and forming a thin line. Goosebumps will form on the voyeur's skin and a chill would run down their spine, slowly suffocating the air in their lungs and piercing a hole into their heart.

Two folds would appear on her forehead and her lips would separate, but she would speak nothing and return to the piano, once more filling the air with the sounds of her mournful lullabies.

A few daring souls remained to listen to her cry, letting her sorrow fill the void in their mind and soon feel as if their body would turn to stone. Petrified, they would remain there until the song finished an hour later and the amber light flickered off.

Others were bold to try and knock on the door, only after attempting to ring the bell and receive dead silence. The music would play uninterrupted and the woman never bothered to answer. Instead she would hunch further over the keys, focusing intensely on them and strengthening the volume of her mellow cry.

The woman never moves from her house. When she does not play she sits on the couch, gazing for hours at the blank television before her. No one dares disturb her, no one thinks to question what she's hoping to see, if anything.

The quiet street remains silent throughout the day, without the sound of children's laughter or the shuffling of footsteps. The years pass by with the only noise of the neighborhood being the echo of the woman's dreary lullaby.

No onlooker questions a soul, for when they see her stare back at them with cold, dead eyes they are filled with fear and regret. Their own soul seems to age many years and they leave only for the desire to erase the image of the icy, frail figure that haunted their memory.

There came a day when the music ceased to play and the dim amber glow no longer appeared in the window. It was said that the ghastly figure was spirited away, there were rumors that she had finally succumbed to illness and starvation. The home remained in its state of despair before the people of the neighborhood banded together to demolish the old home.

One intrepid onlooker who had viewed the woman as a child and had grown curious of her story asked a teacher at his school if he knew anything of the mysterious woman and where she had gone.

The bald headed, elder man only looked back with an ashen face. "She was a student of mine many years ago. Her name was Katrina Vega and she lived in the third house on Chambers St." The elder guided the curious teen into his office and removed a dusty framed photograph from the top of his bookshelf.

In the photograph were seven youthful students with bright eyes and white smiles. Among the students was a beautiful woman with warm brown eyes. This was the image of the icy and frail woman that would play each night at two in the morning. She stood beside another brown haired student in a sparkling blue dress.

"That is her sister, Victoria Vega and her five best friends. My star pupils."

As the teacher told the tale of the woman's mystery, the air grew dense with a thick and suffocating depression. The music stopped playing ten years to the day of the fatal plane crash that took the lives of young Tori Vega, her friends and parents.

It was two in the morning and their original flight got delayed, Tori convinced her mom and dad to get the airport to place them on another flight to the location where she and her friends were set to perform in London.

Something had gone wrong with the plane's engine as they passed over the ocean. It was said that the last thing the woman heard before the plane hit the water was the sound of her sister's friends screaming and her sister weeping in her father's arms while the cell phone stayed on long enough for pure silence to come over the line.

"It was two in the morning and she was waiting for her sister's call to tell her they arrived. To pass the time she played from the piano book her father had given to her. The next morning the news of the crash was aired, and no traces of the plane had been found in the ocean."

A tear fell from the man's face as he returned the photo to the top of his bookshelf. "I can't tell you why she has stopped playing, or where she has gone. For years Lane and I tried to help her and she would never speak. Not even we are aware of where she has gone, or even if she is alive." She vanished without a trace, spirited away as seemingly as the passengers on the plane.

One some cold and dreary nights, the rumor goes that a driver will drive down Chambers Street at two in the morning and they can hear the sad lullaby wafting into the air. Where the old house once stood was now an open pasture, and residents claim that sometimes they will see the faint glow of an amber light flickering in the still black night. There are occasions when these sightings are spotted that they can hear the roar of an absent airplane tearing through the skies.

There is claim that the woman may return one day, despite the rumors that she succumbed to a number of theories. Until then, the ghastly rumors are all that remains of this woman and the memories of the lost family and friends that she eternally waits for to return.

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I hope you liked it, do tell me what you thought and how it affected you. Hope you gave the piano music a listen to while reading as well-though you didn't have to, I hope the mood was set enough.


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